Weekender Encore: Bella Rayne Brings Old-Soul Firepower to BottleRock
By Anne Ward Ernst
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. —Bored and looking for something to do during the pandemic, Bella Rayne happened upon her mother’s high school guitar in the garage. She said it became her COVID hobby.
“I thought, now that I have it, I may as well teach myself to play,” she said.
Though she had no intention of becoming a guitarist, that’s exactly what she is today. She watched YouTube videos and live performances to teach herself to play, and she continues to learn “from the greats,” meaning a host of guitarists whom she admires.
And the week that this Mendocino native turns 18, she’ll be making her debut appearance at BottleRock with a band she handpicked. Sharing the stage with Rayne will be Alex Jordan on keyboard, drummer Danny Luehring, singer Emerson Rose, percussionist Daria Johnson and Angeline Saris on bass.
From pandemic boredom to the BottleRock stage, 18-year-old Bella Rayne found her voice through guitar, punk and a surprising detour into the music of the Grateful Dead.
Rayne started out playing Seattle grunge ’90s music “despite being raised in a huge Deadhead household,” she said. The Grateful Dead was her “parents’ thing,” but she wanted to play punk rock, music by bands such as Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Her parents still are fans of the Grateful Dead, and just like she had no intention of becoming a guitarist, Rayne now performs Grateful Dead songs though that was never part of her plan.
As she was feeling a real connection to her guitar-playing and music that was practically anything-but-the-Grateful-Dead, she started posting on social media videos of herself playing guitar. She caught the attention of a Bay Area band that was intrigued by her and reached out to ask her to sit in with them. Ironically, she said, it was a “Dead band.”
“No, I don’t play Grateful Dead,” she said she told them.
No way she was playing that music; she was into punk. But she agreed to join them, and she said it was “life-changing.” That was two years ago, and the number of musicians she has shared the stage with continues to grow and influence her.
“I really do pick up on anybody I play with, being thrown in to it at a malleable stage,” she said.
She is getting noticed by some big industry names such as Susan Tedeschi, who in an interview with Guitar World last June said Rayne has “more of a hippy style, like Jerry Garcia, where she can really jam and be improvisational, which is what you want to see.”
She said that being onstage “lights a fire” in her. Seeing faces in the audience and people dancing “brings up the energy,” and she feeds off it. Playing for a couple of thousand strangers is easier for her than playing in front of a couple of dozen friends and family, she said.
When she’s not playing a show, Rayne listens to “a little bit of everything.” She’s also working on some originals and tinkering with singing.
Recognizing her youth, she is observing and figuring out who she is as an artist. Her musical tastes and inspirations are broad, and possibly she will “meld all those different styles” and develop her own sound and image that might have a “little bit of an edge” — maybe some alternative rock, jam band or Southern rocky flare with its own Bella Rayne spin to it.
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Anne Ward Ernst is a journalist who loves covering the Napa Valley.
